The Rose
by carsonfiles
Summary: Fine. She was fine. Higher rating for theme.


_**Legal Mumbo-Jumbo**: I own no part of Grey's Anatomy, save for the DVDs and the magazine which I tracked down at a bookstore. And the Dempsey cover of the tv guide, which I didn't find until a week later because every female in the city got to the store before I did. See, if I did own Grey's, I'd have Christina's eyebrows. And Meredith's laugh. And someone else's figure, since I currently have Bailey's. Oh, and I wouldn't have to squint to have Derek in bed with me. _

And I am not Bette Midler, nor do I sing. Or write songs. So I don't own "The Rose" either, not even a bootleg copy.

But without further ado. . .Early second season. Slightly AU. Or not. You decide.

**The Rose**

Some say love--it is a river  
that drowns the tender reed.  
Some say love--it is a razor  
that leaves your soul to bleed.

Some say love--it is a hunger  
an endless aching need.  
I say love--it is a flower  
and you its only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breaking,  
that never learns to dance.  
It's the dream afraid of waking,  
that never takes the chance.  
It's the one who won't be taken  
who cannot seem to give,  
and the soul afraid of dying  
that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely  
and the road has been too long,  
and you think that love is only  
for the lucky and the strong,  
Just remember in the winter  
far beneath the bitter snows,  
lies the seed  
that with the sun's love  
in the spring  
becomes the rose.

* * *

Well, then. Positive. 

Positive as in of course. Positive as in how much more negative could things be? How much more would happen? How far would she be stretched before the lack of her own energy caused her to implode in a supernova of bitterness, leaving a black hole of the Intern Formerly Known As.

She tossed the pee stick into the trash, along with the others. Back to work.

* * *

She saw him that day. Of course she did; there was a downside to the Intern Sleeping with Attending, that if she wanted to excel (and of course she did, excelling was written in her DNA) she couldn't avoid him. The unfortunate result of their previous relationship was that she loved his specialty. She wanted to see all of his surgeries she could, even when she was strong enough not to see him. And one didn't come without the other. So she stood in the OR with him, denying her heart to enable her mind, taking the opportunity to look through his eyes and see the patient's exposed organs. Her fascination with his specialty hadn't begun with their _(affair?)_ relationship. It hadn't even begun in medical school, although you could say with 100 ironic accuracy that she'd had special tutoring in that subject before gaining the letters after her name. And if someone forced her to be honest, ironic accuracy was the best she could do.

* * *

The Seattle Yellow Pages sat on her lap, and tucked within it a paper with two names and numbers. Two routes. She had to make a decision. 

And she had to make it alone. He had made his, and fine, that was fine. Really, fine fine fine fine fine. It became her mantra as the other interns and Bailey asked her how she was doing. She was good at being fine, at pretending that she was not the Misery Goddess, pretending that misery didn't follow her around, that she didn't have her own personal black rain cloud like Rob McKenna, and that it would always be raining, always.

She. Was. Fine.

Fine.

And that very same word? Means The End if you're a musician, which was a pretty accurate description of where she was. The. end.

* * *

Most hospital stays are due to pregnancy or other (ahem) women's issues. That's why Webber had been so eager to offer Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd a contract and just about anything else she asked for to stay in Seattle. So during medical school, obstetrics and gynecology weren't a single class, they weren't a footnote, like say _orthopaedics_, they were important topics. So she knew that half of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage. And that 80 of miscarriages were in the first three months of pregnancy. And when the mother is under-stress (or, you know, teetering on the edge of supernova and implosion) and drinking like a fish (although she hadn't so much after the positive-which-is-really-negative test) odds of a miscarriage go up further. So when she was sitting on the commode, which she really didn't get to do often enough during a 30-hour shift, and noticed blood on her panties, her first reaction was irony. This was the same commode on which she peed on the stick. And she cleaned up what didn't look like a lot of blood anyway, stole a maxipad from the maternity floor, finished up her shift and went home. 

She had managed to work through worse situations than a few cramps.

She could work through the sideways glances, whispered comments, outright stares. Not the ones from the rest of the hospital; those were deflected by her Cloak of Denial. No, the worst ones were from him. The worst ones were the ones that gave her hope.

She didn't need hope.

She was fine.

* * *

That night, as the cramps worsened and the blood flowed, she renewed her relationship with a bottle of alcohol. Ever faithful alcohol, which might not ever call or write, but would never impale her heart either. A girl can't have everything; in the end, it's a question of priorities. 

She was scheduled off the next morning, and she knew that was A Good Thing. She pulled her paper with the choice of two numbers from the Seattle Yellow Pages and picked up the phone. The choice was no longer hers.

* * *

The clinic was tucked in a quiet strip mall, between a nail/tanning salon and a temp agency. A perfect hat trick of irony, which brought a smile to her face. Inside, the gel was colder than she'd thought it would be, and the tech's manner warmer. She wanted cold, distance. 

"Don't be nice," she managed to croak. "Nice will make me cry. And I don't cry."

The doctor determined that the miscarriage was complete, and that there would need to be no evacuation procedure. He recommended that she follow up within the next several months with her regular doctor. He handed her the chart and fee-slip, and directed her to the desk to check out. She looked at the coding on the fee-slip: Procedure—New Patient, Expanded Visit. 99202. Diagnosis—Spontaneous AB, without complication. 634.92. She opened the chart and read his notes.

Stupid bad handwriting. He should have been a lawyer.

"No remaining POC."

POC. Products of conception.

Miracle of life—no. That line of thinking was closed. A no-fly zone. Dead to her.

She was fine.

* * *

Damn elevators. This was what, the third time she'd been on one with him today? But taking the stairs wasn't an option, not today, not her first day back after seeing that doctor and that diagnosis. Maybe tomorrow, when she was less battered. But today, she could feel his intensity, knew when he stopped looking at the floor, knew when he looked at her. 

Knew when he looked down again.

"I miss you." The words were not hers, couldn't be, she was fine, she wouldn't have said that. But she did.

And then he was looking again, and now moving, and she could feel his warmth, his touch, his taste, all senses attuned to this man, with whom she had created a whole future, a castle in the sky in just a few short weeks, and he moved to her, leaned in, dear god just short of an embrace and if she tilted her head they would, they could, no, stop, no, she was fine, but please if she turned right now, she could feel his arms again. No. She clenched her jaw; she was fine.

"I can't."

And the elevator door opened. They exited.

Derek turned right.

Meredith turned left.

_Fine (The End)_

**A/N:** I've gotten some requests to continue this, but I don't think that I can or should. I don't know if this will bump to the top when I upload, but if it did, I'm sorry. There's nothing new here, except for the line-breaks where they should be and a few word changes. I didn't really get how worked. If you like this, you will probably like my longer fic "What Do You Hear In These Sounds," which I plan on using to feed the beast through summer hiatus. And as the muse strikes, I'll be updating "The Match," because it is the same universe as Sounds, and I have to know the back-story for the characters.


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